Tag: Hawaii

Of all the four units we’ve worked on this semester, it’s video that I’m most familiar with. While I don’t shoot and edit video much for work, I love to dabble in it as a hobby (when I can find time). For this project, I wanted to touch upon water conservation. In earlier projects, I covered energy conservation, but water is also part of my work outreach as well.

I decided on creating a public service announcement (PSA) on saving water. It’s a cross between an informational video and a promotional one. However, the best approach I wanted to take was at a “point-of-view” stance after watching a Reuter’s video on Youtube. I also purchased a GoPro camera last year and thought it would be a great opportunity to put it to use.

I’m almost never in front of the camera but for this video shoot, I knew I was the only talent that could do it. So, I enlisted my capable husband to be behind the camera. I borrowed my office’s camera equipment mainly because it came with a wireless microphone. This video was shot with a Canon VIXIA HG G30 digital video camera and my GoPro Hero4 action camera.

I created a script based off an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) brochure I have in the office. We went to the beach park after work to film but we lost the sunlight in a short amount of time. We had to continue filming at a different location a couple of days later.

Filming the GoPro shots was actually tons of fun. There’s this really cool option to use their GoPro app when filming. It made it very easy to set up the camera shot in the planter and in the washing machine with the GoPro.

When it was finally time for editing, organization was my best friend. With so many takes, I had to set up bins to make sense of all the clips. I organized bins by camera, then scene, and what was usable and not. That made editing “easier” in terms of having to sift through numerous clips.

After some feedback from my peers with my draft video, I attempted to lower the background noise of the opening shot by using an audio effect, Adaptive Noise Reduction. However, I don’t think it made a difference in reducing the background noise. For the ending, I also faded to black sooner after the credit rolls on a note from my groupmate. I also made the credit roll go slower for readability and the font size a bit larger, too.

Also, I changed up the way the text appeared on screen for the additional tips section on the suggestion of one of my group members. I made the first bullet point show up then move up when the second bullet point appeared on screen. Here, too, I made the text bigger for readability.

I also tried to slow down the speed of my voiceover to allow more time to read the text. Unfortunately, that made me sound like Death himself (as in a really low voice). It didn’t sound right so I reverted back to the original. I couldn’t re-record the voiceover to talk slower because I lost my voice the past couple weeks and my voice just sounds terrible right now.

I considered taking video or a picture of the WaterSense and ENERGY STAR logos but I felt I would be stepping into a gray area of copyright so I abandoned the idea and stuck with the original background I used in my draft story.

Lastly, I added in a “bug” on the bottom right hand corner for the department’s logo (used with permission) that stays on for the entire video. I also added a lower third for my name and title when I introduce myself. I created that lower third in Illustrator using a “Video and Film” template so I could see the “safe margins” when creating it so to make sure that the transparent white bar bled off the screen. I imported in the actual Illustrator file into Premiere and adjusted the position accordingly.

Here’s my updated storyboard for the PSA. There were only minor revisions from the original.

For this course so far, I’ve been focusing on clean energy. That is because promoting energy-saving is one aspect of outreach which is my topic for this course. I wanted to pivot the focus for this project on the actual topic of outreach. I’ve been employed in this type of work for over four years now and wanted to draw attention to the great efforts education outreach brings to an organization.

I definitely wanted to interview my colleagues here at the State of Hawaii Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs. There’s a few other education specialists for their respective division (as I am for the Division of Consumer Advocacy). So, I decided on creating an explanatory story segment discussing outreach – the good, the bad, the future. With that, I drew inspiration from audio shows like Radiolab to create my audio story.

The original interview of my colleague in the Insurance Division, Chanel Honda, was about seven minutes long. I used my iPhone voice memo app to do the recording which was great since it’s lightweight, I held and moved it between the both of us easily.

I gave Chanel the interview questions ahead of time so she could prepare her answers and we did the interview in one take so I wouldn’t take up so much of her time. I think it also prevented a lot of “mistakes” in her answers since she already knew what she was going to say. There were a few “ums” that I had to edit out but at least it was kept to a minimum.

I brought the recording file into Adobe Audition and started breaking up the interview into question and answer blocks using the razor tool. I knew I wanted to take myself out of the interview because I’ll be narrating in between Chanel’s answers.

I recorded my narration portion of the story, again with my iPhone. I did multiple takes of each line so I wouldn’t have to re-record and upload to Audition repeatedly. After choosing the best take to bring in to the multitrack, I wanted to make sure the flow between my narration and the interview was not “choppy.”

I may have held the iPhone mic too close to her as I had to bring down the sound levels in Audition. Then had the task of matching my recording to the sound levels as hers. I made sure to adjust the volume before cutting up the clip with the razor tool otherwise I’d have to adjust each new individual clip after splicing (which can be a pain).

After some feedback from my peers (including editing the “ums”), I had to re-record the beginning and end of my narration. I changed my introduction of Chanel that I had mentioned at the end, thus, having a new ending to the story. I also needed to define “DCCA” which was an oversight on my part in my draft story. That made for a longer introduction narration for me. Luckily, with the clean-up edits to Chanel’s interview, it didn’t add to the timeline length.

I went researching for some sounds to use in the background just like you would here on NPR, This American Life or Radiolab. I landed on a piano recording I found on ccmixter. I only added it in during my narration so the focus is solely on the content of the interviewee.

I also had another suggestion that the music was a little too loud and distracting from listening to my narration. I lowered the sound levels even lower for the music on each of the four times the music comes on so that it’s at an “elevator music” level… hopefully. With the edits to the narration and cuts to Chanel’s interview, I had to be sure the narration sounds on the second track corresponded correctly with where I wanted it as the interview track shifted.

I think the final story is much cleaner than the draft and am very happy with the end result. Thanks to my peers for making great suggestions.

For this course so far, I’ve been focusing on clean energy. That is because promoting energy-saving is one aspect of outreach which is my topic for this course. I wanted to pivot the focus for this project on the actual topic of outreach. I’ve been employed in this type of work for over four years now and wanted to draw attention to the great efforts education outreach brings to an organization.

I definitely wanted to interview my colleagues here at the State of Hawaii Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs. There’s a few other education specialists for their respective division (as I am for the Division of Consumer Advocacy). So, I decided on creating an explanatory story segment by way of an edited interview, discussing outreach – the good, the bad, the future.

I listened to a couple of audio shows on Radiolab that drew inspiration on how to go about editing the audio interview. The tough part was actually cutting it down to 1-3 minutes. Most of these podcasts are about 20 minutes. Creating something with a beginning, middle, and end under three minutes was pretty difficult especially when I felt I got some great audio content with my interview I wanted to share but had to cut.

The original interview was about seven minutes long. It’s of my colleague in the Insurance Division, Chanel Honda. That is whom you hear in my draft audio story. As mentioned before, it was a challenge to cut it down without having it sound cut off. I used my iPhone voice memo app to do the recording which was great since it’s lightweight, I could carry and move it between the both of us easily.

I brought the recording file into Adobe Audition and started breaking up the interview into question and answer blocks using the razor tool. I knew I wanted to take myself out of the interview because I’ll be narrating in between Chanel’s answers. Even with cutting down to just her answers, the edit was pretty long. I ended up cutting out an extra question I ad-libbed during the interview.

Next, I had to record myself for the narration portion of the story. Again, I used my iPhone for the recording. I did about 4 takes of each line so I wouldn’t have to re-record and upload to Audition repeatedly. After choosing the best take to bring in to the multitrack, I wanted to make sure the flow between my narration and the interview was not “choppy.”

I went researching for some sounds to use in the background just like you would here on NPR, This American Life or Radiolab. While I’m not savvy enough like those podcasts to add in many sound effects, I attempted to with one piano recording I found on ccmixter. I only added it in during my narration so the focus is solely on the content of the interviewee.

I’m open to adding in more background or foley sounds but I’m not sure how to mix them in that would match the content. In any case, I hope the story segment was engaging enough for any listener.

­My division of the state Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs recently agreed to collaborate on the electrification of vehicles in Hawaii. This is in part to help reach the state’s mandate for 100% renewable energy by the year 2045. This new initiative, called “Drive Electric Hawaii,” focuses on accelerating cost-effective electric vehicle use. More on the initiative can be found here.

For the logo design project, I chose to create a logo for the newly formed Drive Electric Hawaii initiative. To the right is a draft of the logo I had done a week ago. As you can see, they’re pretty different from then and now. As much as I loved the draft of the logo, when I happened to see it as a thumbnail on my computer file window, I couldn’t read some of the words. I thought there’s no way that would be able to print on something small like a pen.

Originally, I wanted to convey the words, “drive” and “electric” visually. The first thought came to mind was a car and a plug. What came out of that was the steering wheel in the first draft. After some feedback about the readability, I decided to take the lettering outside of the wheel. When I pulled the lettering out, the grey part of the steering wheel looked a bit silly so I omitted that as well. Now the green “wheel” had become abstract and not at all a steering wheel.

For the word, “electric,” I wanted a font that gave me the feeling of electricity or voltage. This is what I came up with – a bit of a script font that’s neither serif or san serif. A serif font is used for the other two words. I got some feedback about the other font that it wasn’t the same and I should match it. Surprisingly, it is the same font. So, I had to revisit “drive” and “Hawaii” and see how I can improve it. I decided to italicize “Hawaii” to make it match more like “drive.” I hope it helped with the font issue.

As you’ll see from the color palette, I went for only three colors – the teal, dark grey and green that sort of reminds me of a “recycle” type of green. Again, going for this sort of “clean” energy/save-the-earth kind of theme in colors. As for the color of “electric” I went for a teal color that reminded me of a typical Nissan Leaf or Toyota Prius electric vehicle.

For the green wheel, I added a stitching in the middle of it, borrowing from what we learned in the Varsity Lettering tutorial. The stitching there was made to give a look of a lane line on a road. Doesn’t look like much people got that impression from feedback which is okay. On a suggestion, I played around with the colors; changing the wheel to grey and the dashes to yellow like a road but with the actual wheel concept gone, it didn’t look as appealing to me so I stuck with the green.

Now that I moved the lettering to the side, I had to reshape the cord between the “c” in “electric” to the plug. The cord is still the most difficult part of the logo. I’m still not used to how the curvature part of the Pen Tool really works so I did my best to get it how I wanted it. Connecting the letter “c” and the cord itself was tough but I zoomed in on the connecting point to align it.

For the plug, I decided to break off the pins from the plug itself. That in turn created a “hidden” happy face formed from the plug but if you didn’t catch it at least (I hope) you still thought it was a plug. For me, it created a sense of fun and excitement (to drive electric vehicles anyway) within the logo.

Lastly, it was a minor edit but I added in an “okina” in “Hawaii” between the two “i” letters which is a Hawaiian diacritical to be more proper of the language and have an innate sense of localness for Hawaii residents.

My division of the state Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs recently agreed to collaborate on the electrification of vehicles in Hawaii. This is in part to help reach the state’s mandate for 100% renewable energy by the year 2045. This new initiative, called “Drive Electric Hawaii,” focuses on accelerating cost-effective electric vehicle use. More on the initiative can be found here.

For the logo design project, I chose to create a logo for the newly formed Drive Electric Hawaii initiative. As mentioned in my previous post, I’m not a graphic designer so this was definitely a challenge for me. I also don’t know how to draw so didn’t even attempt to put pencil to paper. So, I just started thinking about what I see when I read “Drive Electric Hawaii.”

I wanted to convey the words, “drive” and “electric” visually. The first thought came to mind was a car and a plug. After doing some research, there seemed to be a lot of that created already so I was deterred from the idea. I then started to think about a steering wheel of a car because it’s right in front of you when you’re driving. That’s when the ideas started flowing.

I started with the middle part of the wheel, creating a rectangle across and another one vertically down the middle on the bottom side. I used the polygon tool to bridge the horizontal and vertical rectangles to get the slanted shape in the middle.

For the word, “electric,” I wanted a font that gave me the feeling of electricity or voltage. This is what I came up with – a bit of a script font that’s neither serif or san serif. A serif font is used for the other words. As for the color of “electric” I went for a teal color that reminded me of a typical Nissan Leaf or Toyota Prius electric vehicle.

As you’ll see from the color palette, I went for only three colors – the teal, dark grey and a green (for the wheel) that sort of reminds me a “recycle” type of green. Again, going for this sort of “clean” energy/save-the-earth kind of theme in colors.

For the wheel itself, I added a stitching in the middle of it, borrowing from what we learned in the Varsity Lettering tutorial. The stitching there was made to give a look of a lane line on a road (in addition to actual stitching on a steering wheel). I had to a play around a little with the dash and gap size of the stroke to get it to how I wanted it.

The plug and cord was the last thing I added to the logo. I used the Shape Builder Tool to delete the grey vertical rectangle on the bottom of the wheel and to create a half circle for the plug with rounded rectangles to finish the pins. The cord was the most difficult part of the logo. I used the Pen Tool to draw a cord from the letter “c” to the plug.

I’m still not used to how the curvature part of the Pen Tool really works so that’s why I spent hours just on curving the cord to how I (sort of) wanted it. Connecting the letter “c” in “electric” and the cord itself was tough. I ended up using the Paintbrush Tool to fill in the connection. Originally, I had the cord going behind the grey part of the steering wheel but thought it would be cool to bring it forward but behind the text. This is the end result for my draft logo.

When I began working for the government in 2012, I started out in the Investor Education Program of the Securities Office of the Department of Commerce and Consumers Affairs (DCCA) for the State of Hawaii. It was a newly created position because it had an element of multimedia as part of the outreach efforts. Over four years later, I still find myself working in outreach for the state.

The topic I’ve chosen for this blog is, naturally, on education outreach for the general public. I spent over three years with the Securities Office before moving into my current position in another division of the DCCA, at the Division of Consumer Advocacy (DCA). Even with the move, the type of position remained the same – education outreach.

When I started, I was a Securities Multimedia Assistant and now I am an Education Specialist. Despite being in two different industries (investments and public utilities), the mission of my positions have only differed slightly. In Securities, I did a lot more event planning and project management for the outreach efforts. At DCA, outreach is more driven by public relations (media) as well website and social media updates.

My work in outreach is to bring awareness to the public of 1) what my office does for Hawaii consumers and 2) prevent or promote the industry topic (i.e. fraud prevention when I worked in Securities and encourage energy efficiency at DCA). Often times the public doesn’t know what we do – or worse, they don’t know we exist! So outreach is an important part of our state department to be able to help the public help themselves.

I’m glad that I was able to make the move because then I got to branch out more into different forms of communicating with the general public but I also got to use the experience that I’ve had from the old division and implement them into the new one. Now, I have a whole arsenal of outreach tactics to spread the word to the general public. Sure, the topics are vastly different but the methods to bring awareness to an audience have the same principles.

I look forward to exploring more about the topic of education outreach in the hopes that I can bring what I’ve learn in the course and apply it immediately to my position to advance my office’s outreach approaches in the future. It’s already been a few years and my interest in education outreach has not waned. I hope to continue down this path and bring more to the table as I learn and grow in the program.